Monday, February 11, 2013

Partisan-Based "Evidence"

I'll be brief today. Krugman is off on yet another partisan rant and because I have no interest in defending the Republican Party, I'll let others offer whatever defense they might choose.

However, I will point out that the column itself involves the usual kind of snobbery one would expect from a college professor who truly sees himself as being an example of brilliance and reason. I do find it strange, thought, that he chooses Hillary Clinton and the Benghazi attacks as an example of GOP malfeasance.

After all, the Obama administration from Hillary Clinton to President Obama himself lied about the attacks, what happened, and why they happened. We were supposed to believe that an obscure video was the cause of all this carnage and that the attacks occurred spontaneously.

The "evidence-based" world told a different story, but Clinton, Obama, and Krugman are moving on and then falsely accusing anyone who does not go with the administration's latest story as being part of an "ignorance-based" caucus.

As for Krugman and the claims that anyone who might disagree with his view of global warming is subject to intense persecution, he might want to look at the facts and make an "evidence-based" assessment. He wants us to believe that oil companies and crazy conservatives dominate the media conversation and the policy prescriptions, not to mention the research funding. Single government-funded research projects receive more than the entirety of Exxon-Mobile grants, but to Krugman, any questioning at all of the government's paradigm is tantamount to murderous treason.

Evidence-based, indeed.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

What I don't understand is, why is Krugman so easily and automatically believing and understanding that the future effects of Climate Change, however long or short in the future, are CERTAIN to require instant economy altering change...

And yet, any sort of fiscal impropriety or debt-related malfeasance couldn't POSSIBLY matter, outside of the throw-away "maybe eventually when a Republican is President" kind of thing.

We can't "Kick the can" on climate change? Even though delayed action could quite possibly rival the whole 'alien invasion' type stimulus when the time comes? And yet, anything fiscally responsible is fair game to criticise in light of its short-term costs.

Even though Krugman has attemtped to wave this criticism off, it's just a poor argument. It's like he's saying, "Well, climate change threats ARE legitimate, and fiscal ones aren't...AND it is illogical and unreasonable to offer the possibility that both could be legitimate or illigitimate".

It should not be that only one lens is allowed to be used through which to view these two issues with short and long-term repercussions.

Mike said...

Anonymous asked: “What I don't understand is, why is Krugman so easily and automatically believing and understanding …”

I offer the following explanation short of abject ignorance

“It is impossible to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it” - Upton Sinclair

Bob Roddis said...

I'm constantly told by the MMTers that under a private money regime that output would be so much lower due to the lack of the necessary "stimulus" of fiat funny money and deficit spending. Therefore, Keynesian "stimulus" is the cause of "global warming".